been that this here same courage is in most cases more a matter of temperament than anything else. The roughneck, boneheaded slugger gets slammed all over the ring and fin'ly floored. He's half in a trance, and he's only got a faint idea of what it's all about; but his legs mechanically raises him upright again without no effort of his dazed brain at all, because they been doin' that same thing for years. The intelligent boxer, knocked kickin' by a wallop, has been in the habit of usin' his head to think with, and said head is now ringin' like a set of chimes. The crazy yells of the crowd comes to him like the boom of a roarin' surf, his glassy eyes rolls around inquirin'ly, and in the ten seconds it takes him to clear his dome and try to figure what he'll do when he gets up he's counted out and often called yellah. Nine times outa ten this baby's just as game as the other guy, or gamer—he's built temperamentally different, that's all!
My idea of the real gamester is the bird which can't take it and knows he can't, but takes his chance with the toughest the game can produce in his efforts to get to the top! The guy with the glass jaw or the weakmuscled stomach that's gotta win quick or not at all. The nervous, imaginative baby which takes more mental punishment in his corner waitin' for the first bell than he ever does from any guy's gloves and that's gotta lick himself before he even faces the cuckoo in the other corner. The kind that, if he fought eighty-six times a day every day in the week, would never get over the soul-tearin' torture of the sneerin', howlin' mob around the ring, the sight of blood, the glarin' calcium over his head, the jarrin' impact of fist on
